LAX’s Tom Bradley International Terminal beset by problems in first months, records show

Construction continues on the Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX in April 2011. An American Airlines jet takes off behind the construction on the southern side of the new terminal. File photo. (Scott Varley / Staff Photographer)

Construction crews work continues on the Tom Bradley International Terminal in April 2011. Equipment is brought into a deep pit area before being craned or moved into position. The pit will become the basement area of the new great hall. File photo. (Scott Varley / Staff Photographer)

The new Tom Bradley International Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport was beset by a series of nagging problems in the months after politicians and civic leaders gathered in September to celebrate the opening of a major chunk of the nearly $2 billion facility, according to internal airport records.

In the first month that the new terminal was open, the Los Angeles Fire Department logged 18 fire “incidents,” the majority of which were false alarms, internal airport emails show, and those running the facility were not sure what was causing them or where they were coming from.

Other incidents involved employees trapped in elevators, water leaks, tampered wiring, jet fuel pits with uneven metal covers, a contaminated system used to pump water onto aircraft and a closed-circuit camera system that did not adequately resolve blind spots for air traffic controllers, the documents show.

On many days, new gates were taken out of service as construction workers raced to fix problems like broken power units and aircraft docking systems.

But it was the faulty fire alarms — which firefighters were forced to respond to —that seemed to get under the skin of airport supervisors.

The officials thought the alarms were connected in some way to construction undertaken by airport tenants.

“Someone has to do something about this,” Roger Johnson, Los Angeles World Airports’ deputy executive director of airports development, wrote Oct. 22 in an email to two LAX construction managers. “I suggest we disconnect all the alarms in the affected area and put the area on fire watch until the tenant work is done. Unless you guys can come up with a better solution, let’s discuss this one tomorrow. We have to stop this insanity.”

Johnson’s email came several hours after another fire alarm sounded at the terminal, one that activated fire doors and forced the Fire Department to respond, yet again, to the building. After it went off, Johnson sent his project manager an email asking, “Any ideas where this one is?” The reply came three minutes later. “Nope,” project manager Michael Doucette wrote.

The fire alarm issue was one of more than half a dozen documented problems in the three months after the terminal opened Sept. 18, internal emails and documents show. The building had long been scheduled to open Dec. 12, 2012, but construction delays pushed that day back considerably.

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In an email to the Los Angeles News Group this week, Johnson said the issues have been fixed.

“What you refer to as challenges is actually quite common in a construction project as extensive as the New Tom Bradley International Terminal,” Johnson wrote. “LAWA’s Airports Development Group anticipated issues would arise, planned for and included appropriate funding in the budget to make any necessary repairs and or adjustments.”

Robert Brehm, professor of civil architectural and environmental engineering at Drexel University in Philadelphia, said new buildings do often have glitches. But Brehm said he was most surprised by the fire issue. The airport had considered instituting a fire watch — in which workers are paid to stand around and look for fires — because it is such an expensive undertaking.

“When you commission a building you have to expect there are some hiccups,” Brehm said “The fact that there were 18 alarms? Normally, you would find the reason in short period. I can understand three or four or five, but I would have expected they would have found the flaw earlier.”

Using the California Public Records Act, the Los Angeles News Group obtained internal airport documents and emails for a period from Oct. 15, 2013, to Dec. 9, 2013. During that period, airport construction managers were wrestling with these issues:

• Customs and Border Protection officers complained of at least two water leaks into their facility, believed to have come from two food concessions, one at Border Grill and the other at Umami Burger, emails show. “CBP needs an immediate repair to the leaks in their space,” wrote John Cordner, a consultant hired by the airport. “Passengers processing and CBP equipment are impacted.” This was an issue in October and December, records show.

• The terminal’s fuel pits — holes in the ground from which airlines pump jet fuel onto planes — had become a considerable safety problem for anyone driving cargo on the airfield. The pit covers, which resemble manhole covers, were not flush with the pavement. “The fuel pit at (Gate 152) is a safety hazard,” Cordner wrote. “Develop a plan to fix it and prevent recurrence.”

• On consecutive days at the end of September, two employees were trapped in two different elevators. A Customs and Border Protection officer was stuck for 41 minutes, while a Los Angeles World Airports employee was stuck for less than 20 minutes, emails show.

• Airport workers discovered that someone was urinating on the floor in a mechanical room, a behavior Jonathan Lockwood, MEP resident engineer, called “completely unacceptable.” There were other issues there as well. “Someone who has access to that space is smoking in there and leaving their cigarette butts on the floor,” Lockwood wrote. “It also looks like they are putting the cigarettes out using the fire protection coating on the columns.”

• Because the building’s roof is so high, Federal Aviation Administration controllers cannot see when airplanes push back from gates. Four closed-circuit cameras were supposed to help this problem, but FAA officials were complaining that the cameras were not adequate. “We cannot accept the equipment unless we can be 100 percent sure the information that the system is providing is 100 percent accurate,” John F. Nelson, operations manger for the Los Angeles Tower, wrote in an email to an airport construction consultant. Among the issues: Because of where the cameras were placed, controllers had difficulty viewing aircraft at night and in the morning, when the glare from the sun was intense. “The night view is unacceptable and needs to be resolved ASAP,” Nelson wrote.

Although Johnson said the airport has solved this problem, a source familiar with the tower operations said controllers still aren’t relying on the cameras; instead, they track planes through controller instructions, pilot reports and ground radar.

• An inspector with the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety found that two pollution-control units at two stalls in the food court — Umami Burger and Marmalade — had likely been tampered with. In a discussion of the issue, Anthony Hadayat, senior development director for Westfield, wrote: “The fact that no one knows who changed the PCU wiring and that it has to be by people who knew what they were doing with specific intent; This is disconcerting to say the least.”

• The system designed to pump water onto airplanes was contaminated, and the water coming out of it — according to a picture in an email attachment — was a yellowish-brownish color. The airport had to shut off the system, forcing airlines to either use bottled water on board or truck the water to the gates. “Something impacted the filters in the water cabinets big time,” Robert Freeman, an airport environmental manager, wrote in a Nov. 25 email to consultant Kris Vogt and airport employee Daniel Campbell. “Is there anything you can think of that could have imparted the rust or led to the filter condition?” In December, the airport released a public statement saying, “LAWA continues to systematically test water at the cabinets, and is also looking at the relevant parts of TBIT’s water system to be sure any water quality issues are accurately isolated and addressed.”

In many of these emails, airport construction managers expressed optimism that most of the issues could be fixed relatively easily.

But the fire alarm problem was particularly vexing throughout the fall, documents show. Even when there was actually smoke, airport officials were confused, emails show.

Take a 3:30 p.m. incident on Oct. 22 caused by a Umami Burger fire sensor. According to an email from an airport operations official, smoke began to fill the Bradley terminal’s food court. When the smoke dissipated, officials tried to rest the fire system, but they could not. “Some fault in the system caused it to activate again,” an airport operations official wrote to colleagues.

This explanation did not please Viji Prasad, the airport’s chief of operations.

“The frequency at which the fire alarms are being activated is alarming,” he wrote in reply. “Besides apparent inconvenience to the public and concessions, these incidents are extremely resource intense. Any resolution in sight?”